Re: Cannot add an column of type serial

David Sigeti wrote:

> At 12:21 PM 12/10/2003 +0100, Andreas Pflug wrote:
>
>> David Sigeti wrote:
>>
>>> I am using pgadminIII 1.0.2 with PostgreSQL 7.4 under W2K SP4 and
>>> Cygwin (current as of 2 or 3 weeks ago). The server is running
>>> locally.
>>>
>>> If I attempt to add an column of type serial or bigserial to a
>>> table, the operation fails with a message telling me that adding an
>>> column with a default value is not implemented. What is really
>>> weird is that one can, in fact, add a column with a default value,
>>> like an int4 with a default value or 0.
>>
pgAdmin breaks this into two steps for you; have a look at the SQL page.

>>> The problem does not arise if the serial (or bigserial) column is
>>> created when the table is created (as a part of CREATE TABLE).
>>
>> serial isn't a true datatype but a keyword that can be used only at
>> creation time. Still, pgAdmin3 should create the commands necessary
>> for this to make life easier; I added this as a TODO item.
>
>
> Adding this functionality would be great but I suggest that the error
> message be changed right away as it is seriously misleading.
>
The error message originates from the backend. I agree that this might
be confusing to newbies, who don't know that serial actually is int4
default nextval('...') (currently pgAdmin3 doesn't either :-)

I'm forwarding this to pgsql-hackers.

Regards,
Andreas